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The Butchering Art

Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

By:
Lindsey Fitzharris

Narrated by:
Ralph Lister

Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
1,133

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
1,047

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
1,047

In
The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.

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The Butchering Art

Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

By:
Lindsey Fitzharris

Narrated by:
Sam Woolf

Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins

Unabridged

Overall

5 out of 5 stars
19

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
19

Story

5 out of 5 stars
19

In
The Butchering Art, historian Lindsey Fitzharris re-creates a critical turning point in the history of medicine, when Joseph Lister transformed surgery from a brutal, harrowing practice to the safe, vaunted profession we know today.

Victorian operating theatres were known as 'gateways of death', Fitzharris reminds us, since half of those who underwent surgery didn't survive the experience. This was an era when a broken leg could lead to amputation, and surgeons were still known to ransack cemeteries to find cadavers.